25 March 2011

We begun our day gently drifting towards Paradise Bay, checking in with a Chilean research station en route, before arriving at the dramatic setting of a "rival" Argentina base, Almirante Brown. This small base with a prominent Argentina flag painted brazenly across the roof, was flanked by a huge glacier that we toured for a while to take in the truly extraordinary scenery that ONLY is offered on the White Continent.

Sometimes in Antarctica the scenery outcompetes anything the wildlife can do...

We stopped off at the base, checked in with some Gentoo Penguins and also our first Chinstrap Penguins hiding out at the back of the colony, that were getting a little aggravated with each other...

All the time the penguins were under the watchful eye of the Snowy Sheathbills, that are ever resourceful and looking for any slight opportunity to take down a penguin or scavenge at a skua's latest catch...

In the afternoon we headed out into Neko Bay on the zodiacs for some whale action, while surrounded by the best bergs on the Peninsula...

MY NATURE PHOTOS

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WHO is Sam Woods?

A pair of tits (Blue and Great) in a London park 30 years back changed my life; I became a birder, and an obsessive birder by the following weekend. Works like Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book and Richard Millington's A Twitcher's Diary helped in no small part to nurture this in my formative years.
30 years on I am still an avid birder but have also learnt to appreciate other sectors of the natural world, especially frogs and primates in particular, through the undoubted influence of David Attenborough The Great and others. I now work as a full-time professional tour leader for Tropical Birding Tours, and now reside in the Andes of Ecuador. I love my job, sharing birds with people provides every bit of a buzz as a lifebird, which, of course, still creates a wave of excitement every time. I have been lucky enough to see well over 6550 bird species on my travels, which does not make me any more talented than anyone else, just one that is always greedy and impatient for more, which has taken me to all seven continents, and always yearning for that ONE...MORE...B-I-R-D!
I use Swarovski binoculars & scope, & shoot with Canon 7D and Canon 400m f5.6L lens.